A WORD ON THE CAPITALIZATION OF BIRD NAMES

It's always bothered me that most media outlets don't capitalize the common names of birds.  I've just never understood why.  It's unnecessarily confusing  - does "I saw a yellow warbler" mean you saw the species Setophaga petechia or that you saw a warbler of the color yellow, like a Prothonotary or Pine Warbler?  

It also strikes me - as a birder - as disrespectful.  Birders are a species-centric bunch.  Field guides are divided into species, each one seeming to be its own separate brick - distinct but accommodating - in the birdlife structure.  Our lists are built by species one-by-one; the Carolina Chickadee only counts once no matter how many individuals you've seen.  To us, the combination of words creating a species' common name is the carrier of meaning, it's the it, it creates - quite literally - a proper noun. (Sometimes even capital letters at the start of the words aren't enough, and we distinguish species in bold or in all-caps.)

To cast that combination of words back among the unwashed lower-case, then, is to rob it of its magic.  To a birder it seems undignified.  To a scientist, though, treating species not as icons but as data (or, more likely, with a much better understanding of the muddy fluidity that is the "species" concept), or to a layperson, who couldn't give a crap either way, the common name is meaningless,  unworthy of extra typeface.

An English professor would explain that the difference is common vs. proper nouns.  The argument is that, basically, the common name of a bird species is not capitalized because there are lots of individuals of that bird.  So, while the words Eastern Bluebird refer to a unique species, they don't refer to a unique bird, and it should be just eastern bluebird.  

I think this is garbage.  Say what you will about common nouns, but there's nothing common about Common Goldeneye: the uncommon combination of those words means the author wasn't referring to some common goldeneye but a Common Goldeneye, an uncommon bird among all birds but one distinct from - and more common than - the uncommon Barrow's Goldeneye.  The "common-ness" of a common noun falls away when it refers to something specific.  

The academic distinction erodes further when talking about brand names.  Under most style guides, Jeep Golden Eagles and Plymouth Road Runners get the royal treatment but golden eagles and greater roadrunners don't.  Why is that?  Like a bird's common name, saying "Plymouth Road Runner" doesn't refer to a single car but a group of alike cars that are somehow distinguishable from others.   You're telling me that some stupid marketer's focus-grouped baloney gets capital letters but living creatures that have literally reshaped their own bodies over thousands of years to better survive harsh and changing environments are "common"?

Look, just capitalize your common species names, OK?  Show a little respect.